In this installment of Law Matters, Dean Jelani Jefferson Exum speaks with Professor Elaine Chiu about Professor Chiu’s work at the intersection of criminal law, cultural identity, and systemic reform. Among other notable achievements, Professor Chiu recently published “The Model Minority Victim” in the Santa Clara Law Review, co- produced the documentary Voices Against Anti-Asian Hate with the Asian American Bar Association of New York (AABANY), and received AABANY’s Women’s Leadership Award for her impactful work as an advocate and educator. She is faculty adviser to St. John’s Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development and Asian Pacific American Law Students Association (APALSA) and previously led the Law School’s Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights.
JJE: As an educator and a scholar, you explore how cultural identity and community intersect with the criminal legal system. What draws you to that work?
EC: I was a teenager in New York City during the 1980s, when Asian gangs were a serious problem, especially in Chinatown. At Stuyvesant High School, metal detectors were standard and violence was always a possibility. My younger brother was robbed at an arcade, and my parents were caught on the street during a shootout. Anytime there’s violence, extortion, threats, and organized crime, there’s harm. But when that harm comes from within your own community, there’s an extra dimension of pain and suffering. At the same time, growing up in working-class Staten Island—where my neighbor was a police officer and many customers at my parents’ takeout restaurants were public servants—gave me a foundation of trust in government. So, when the gangs caused harm, I believed the way forward was to report and cooperate with authorities, because silence only strengthened the gangs’ power. In many ways, that was how my cultural identity and my Chinese New Yorker roots first intersected with the criminal legal system—at once deeply personal, and admittedly a bit naïve.
JJE: Your work illuminates how the law reflects, and sometimes reinforces, social inequalities. How do you approach those conversations with students?
EC: I approach those conversations with great care and deliberation. As an Asian American, my identity helps me relate to students who have been oppressed, privileged, or invisibilized. When appropriate, I share my personal experiences and draw on the dramatic legal history of Asian Americans—from the Chinese Exclusion Act to the murder of Vincent Chin—to build trust in the classroom and in my work as an advisor. I also use pedagogical tools, like starting my Perspectives on Justice class with a discussion about how words can carry different meanings depending on the speaker and listener. Shared understandings are especially important when we take on tough topics like hate, inequality, systemic oppression, privilege, and reparations.
JJE: What role do you think law schools and law professors play in shaping the next generation of advocates for justice?
EC: They play a big role, though the impact often takes patience to see. It unfolds gradually over time. We shape the next generation of advocates through our scholarship, particularly by advancing ideas from marginalized or underrepresented perspectives; through teaching, by modeling the courage to introduce complex, meaningful topics and creating space for students to share their own insights; and through service, both within the law school and in the broader community. All these efforts help plant the seeds for long-term change.
JJE: What areas of law or scholarship are you most excited to explore next?
EC: I’m still deeply engaged in thinking about hate crimes, especially how they relate to physical spaces. Despite our ideals, America remains highly segregated, and that reality shapes where and how bias-motivated crimes occur. If someone wanted to target a particular group—whether East Asian American women, Muslim worshippers, or LGBTQ+ individuals—there are often predictable places they might go, like massage parlors, mosques, or gay bars. Perhaps they would go to my alma mater, Stuyvesant High School, or to an intersection in Flushing, Queens. The law tends to recognize certain spaces as indicative of bias crimes and ignore others. Why is that? And what does it reveal about which communities are seen and protected by the law?
JJE: You’ve mentored many St. John’s Law students and alumni over the years. What has that experience meant to you?
EC: Teaching and mentoring students, especially young adults, is my secret fountain of youth. I never tire of helping them navigate the many ways to begin a legal career—whether through dispute resolution, transactional work, advocacy, or direct client services—or suggesting better ways to prepare for finals. In turn, I’ve learned from them: about wellness, new technologies, self-doubt, self-esteem, distraction, grit, and much more. Most of all, being in conversation with, and learning from, students and alumni gives me hope for the future.
Stay tuned for more faculty conversations in our Law Matters series, where we bring you inside the ideas shaping legal education, scholarship, and practice at St. John’s Law and beyond.